interlinkONE

Meet The Team Friday: Kyle Gifford

Posted by Lou Cimaglia on Friday, December 21, 2012 at 8:00 AM in Meet The Team

Baseball legend Reggie Jackson once said he was “the straw that stirs the drink,” when it came to the New York Yankees.

Here at interlinkONE and Grow Socially, Kyle Gifford is the straw. One of the company’s most recent hires, Kyle is the manager of the development room. His main job is to keep things moving forward in the development pipeline.

“Right now,” said Kyle,  ”my main job is getting a process and a workflow in place for the development team and for the other departments in the company who work with the development team.”

He noted that one of his primary functions upon joining the team was to give the developers  more time to develop software, and less time determining business priorities. By shifting that responsibility to other people in the company, the developers can be much more productive.

“I want to make it so that its one point of contact, one prioritized list – and explaining that to people,” said Kyle. “I want to help them understand the quickest way to get their work prioritized.”

Kyle went on to say that the new process will help everyone – in the company as well as outside – to understand what “we are working on, the status of us, analysis of how the team is performing long term, longer term releases, when we can expect new products.”

Kyle continued by saying that work-life balance is very important to him, and having procedural consistency decreases that work stress.

A native of Missouri, Kyle graduated from Truman State University. After graduation, Kyle joined the Peace Corps, where he spent time in Armenia. He went on to live in Dallas, and finally landed in Boston roughly a year and a half ago.

His biggest hobby, as evidenced by his experience, is traveling. “I really like being in New England,” said Kyle, who got his start in developing by creating websites about video games. “It’s a part of the country I hadn’t spent a lot of time in before. I’ve hiked Mount Washington, went rafting in Maine, been skiing a lot, been to the big cities. I like exploring. I like trying new things.”

When asked about the most rewarding part of his job, Kyle spoke of the “transformation” he has noticed since the beginning of his tenure. “It’s been a pretty big shift in the workflow and the way we’ve been doing things. Much more structured, I think it is relaxed and we have a way to fight fires.”

All software and process is only as good as the people who create them. Kyle said this is one of the most impressive things he has seen thus far.

“It’s really cool to see everyone in the company giving back and wanting to improve things, open to change, and really trying to make the process better for the company.”

Kyle Gifford Fast Facts

Favorite Movie: Die Hard

Favorite TV Show: Amazing Race

Favorite Food: Mexican

Favorite Android App: Google Reader

If you could pick the next interlinkONE/Grow Socially company outing, it would be…

“Skydiving. I think it would be fun to see how people would react to being thrown out of a plane.”

(1) Comment Tags development, Grow Socially, interlinkONE, jira, john foley, kyle gifford, Marketing, meet the team, Software, workflow